but he thrust it aside – he had seen plenty of his soldiers mutilated over the years: if you play with fire you must expect to get your fingers burnt – the bastard had been plotting far worse, he was lucky to be alive and if he’d been caught in South Africa he would have been hanged after the police had wrung the truth out of him. Harker had no fear that the man could be dangerous: no ANC official would be so dumb as to tell the FBI he was meeting with Fidel Castro’s henchmen on holy American soil. Without much difficulty Harker parried the thrust of guilt as he encoded his report to Dupont that Sunday afternoon, and when his computer began to print out the information from Washington that the survivor was now positively identified by the CIA as Alexander Looksmart Kumalo, his remorse evaporated further. Looksmart Kumalo was well known to Military Intelligence as one of the ANC’s sabotage strategists.
That afternoon Harker took the shuttle flight to Washington to deliver to Dupont all the documents seized at the farmhouse. He had not read them; he had tried, he could read Spanish with difficulty but he could not concentrate; indeed he did not want to know any more than he had to about the misery of war and murderous skulduggeries in its name, and he wanted to forget his work of last night. But when he walked into the soundproof office behind the reception desk of the Royalton Hotel a happily drunk Dupont not only thrust a large whisky at him after pumping his hand in congratulation – ‘Jolly good show, fucking good show! Sanchez and Moreno!’ – but also insisted Harker give him a blow by blow account. And sitting in the corner was the CIA man whom Harker knew only by the codename ‘Fred’, the guy who was Dupont’s handler or contact with the United States’ ‘Dirty Tricks Bureau’ as he called it, and Fred wanted every detail on tape.
‘Fucking good show …’ Dupont interjected frequently.
Neither Dupont nor Fred was unduly concerned about the survivor, Looksmart Kumalo. It was a pity, of course, that he had not perished with the rest of the blackguards but there was no danger of the bastard spilling the beans: he would be debriefed by the CIA and advised, ‘in the nicest possible way’, that not only was his liberty at stake because of the cocaine the FBI had planted on him, but his health was also because – if he didn’t have a mysterious fatal heart attack in hospital – he would be deported to South Africa where he belonged and where he would receive a warm welcome from the authorities if he opened his big mouth. And if he broke the bargain he was being so generously offered, the British MI5, France’s Sûreté and most of the civilized world’s secret services would have him prominently on their shit-list.
‘He won’t talk publicly,’ Froggy Fred croaked, ‘and if he does they’ll be the last words he utters.’
‘You planted cocaine on him?’ Harker frowned. ‘I thought the FBI were going to blame the whole thing on the Cuban exile community in Miami. Now you’re going to claim it was a drug-war assassination?’
‘Both,’ Fred rumbled. ‘We blame it on both, as alternative possibilities, to raise confusion.’
Dupont leered happily, stroking the pile of documents. ‘He’ll keep his mouth shut, don’t worry …’
It was after midnight when the debriefing was declared over and a taxi was summoned to take Harker back to the airport. Dupont offered him a room in the hotel –‘The presidential suite indeed’ – and Fred volunteered to throw in a good hooker ‘on Uncle Sam’ – ‘Or two!’ Dupont cried – but Harker just wanted to get the hell, away from yesterday, from these awful guys, from this hotel where they festered.
As he climbed into the taxi, Dupont breathed alcoholically through the window. ‘Fucking good show! Now you relax, disappear to the beach for a few days, then get on to the Bigmouth case …’
He did disappear to the coast, but not to enjoy himself – it was to brood. Ah yes, his soldier’s conscience was clear, more or less, but even soldiers sometimes want to be alone after they have done battle, spilt voluminous blood, mourn not for the enemy but the whole dreadful business of taking so much life. And he did not want to ‘get on to the Bigmouth case’ – he felt a fraud. He was a fraud. Jack Harker dearly wished he was not bound to take the beautiful Josephine Valentine to lunch next Saturday, he wanted to be alone, he dearly wished he did not have to pose fraudulently as her potential publisher in order to further the ends of apartheid. Josephine Valentine’s book was hardly a legitimate military target.
And he would not do so.
No, he would not do so. Jack Harker refused to defraud Josephine Valentine any further by pretending that he was interested in publishing her book. He would have to pay her the courtesy of reading her ten chapters, and he would give her his honest opinion, but he would tell her immediately thereafter that Harvest would not publish it. He was not going to give her false hope, and he certainly was not going to obey orders and bury her book, kill it by publishing it badly. Fuck you, Felix Dupont.
Having made that decision he felt better. On Saturday, when he drove back to Manhattan, he was again looking forward to having lunch with one of the best-looking women in New York.
When Josephine Valentine came sweeping into the yacht club dining room, clutching her file, beaming, hand extended, she was even lovelier than he remembered.
‘Hi!’ She pumped his hand energetically: hers was warm and both soft and strong. She was a little breathless, as if she had been hurrying. ‘Am I late?’
‘Indeed you’re two minutes early,’ Harker smiled. ‘You look beautiful.’
‘Thank you. Well …’ She plonked the file down on the table. ‘Here it is.’ But she put her hand on it. ‘Please, don’t look at it now. I want you to give it your undivided attention at home. And,’ she grinned, ‘I’m nervous as hell.’ She sat.
Oh dear. ‘Don’t be, I know you write well.’ Harker sat down. And he decided that right now was the moment to start extricating himself. ‘And I’m not the only publisher in town. Indeed you’ll probably do better with a bigger house.’
Consternation crossed her lovely face. ‘But you will consider it? Are you saying you’re not interested any more?’
Oh Christ. ‘I’m just being realistic, for your sake.’ He smiled. ‘On the contrary, I’m the one who should be nervous that you’ll take it to somebody else.’
Josephine sat back and blew out her cheeks. ‘For a moment I thought you were trying to tell me something.’ Then she said anxiously, ‘You will be brutally honest with me, won’t you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Okay.’ She sat back, with a brilliant smile. ‘And now let’s stop talking about it – I’ve been burning the midnight oil all week.’
‘So what’ll you have to drink?’
‘A double martini for starters. Followed by a bucket of wine. And remember I’m paying.’
‘You are not.’ The fucking CCB was paying.
They had a good time again that day. They laughed a great deal, drank a lot, became very witty and wise. Harker got into a mood to celebrate too, but he was not sure what: he still felt a fraud. And, God, he just wanted to get this masquerade of being her potential publisher over so he could do what publishers should not do – make a pass at an author. Oh, to take her hand across the table, look into her blue eyes, tell her how beautiful she was, to feel her body against his, to go through the delightful process of courtship: but as long as he was defrauding her his conscience would not permit it, his head had
